Language Skills? Talk To Us
A language company is crying out for new translators fluent in Polish and ENGLISH!
Notts-based betterlanguages.com – providers of translation services for companies including Mothercare and Weetabix – are experiencing a chronic shortage of skilled and qualified native speakers of the two languages.
They are down to their last Polish translator - who lives in California making communication difficult due to the time difference.
And they are desperate to hear from qualified English speakers who can translate another world language into perfect prose.
betterlanguages.com currently employ a network of 150 linguists based all over the world.
But the company – one of the UK’s fastest growing translation providers – needs more to help meet burgeoning demand.
They have just enjoyed a bumper Christmas with much of their success coming from the American market.
In the US they provide translation for Zak Designs – the company which produces numerous Thomas the Tank Engine items including school lunch boxes and drink cups.
From their Notts base betterlanguages.com translated the Thomas items from English into nine additional languages including Finnish, Russian and Dutch.
Their biggest single client is Mothercare International who account for one quarter of all business. betterlanguages.com translate all the chain’s own brand goods including packaging materials, instructions, user guides and labels. Mothercare currently trade in 48 countries and betterlanguages.com translate English into nine other languages for them including Chinese, Greek and Polish.
They also used their US-based Polish translator when Leicestershire County Council commissioned them to translate information about the Battle of Bosworth for Bosworth’s Visitor Centre.
But now MD Mike Hunter has made an appeal for more qualified translators to get in touch and send him their CVs.
He said: “Skilled and qualified translators are always hard to come by but Polish linguists in particular are like gold dust.
“We’ve got one very good Polish translator but if she’s not available then we do struggle.
“That may surprise some people who encounter a growing number of Eastern Europeans living here in the UK but we need to hear from people with very specific skills and qualifications.
“They must be members of a recognised professional translator association either in their home country or here. They must also have a relevant degree or post graduate level qualification.
“Often they will have a first degree in languages and a second degree or diploma in translation. I’m also interested in hearing from individuals who possess particular technical knowledge, perhaps a first degree in engineering followed by a diploma in linguistics.
“The work we do requires a very high level of attention to detail as we will not sign off on a project until we’re absolutely certain we’ve nailed it.
“Sometimes we have arguments in the office about how best to translate one word. Such discussions can go round and round but we don’t give up until we’re certain we’ve got it.
“You need that level of tenacity to be a really good translator - you need to be like a dog with a bone. It’s surprisingly easy for exact meaning to get lost in translation.
“Our translators must be able to think laterally at times and employ real creativity. I’m certain there are some good translators out there that we don’t know about.”
He added that he believed the shortage in English translators lay in Britain’s poor record with languages.
He said: “I think we Brits are traditionally a bit lazy when it comes to languages. There’s a tendency not to bother because we know most Europeans speak English anyway.
“This attitude is very narrow, for example Holland has approximately 50% of its population speaking at least some English, but this means in a country considered to have a high level of language skill, the other 50% don’t speak any!
“In contrast many of our European mainland translators speak several languages. Our lead translator for Flemish also translates from German to Flemish, and is semi fluent in French.
“We have a few highly skilled English natives, including a specialist legal translator who translates four European languages into English, but she is the exception, and is always very busy.
“At our level we still see the effects of this contrast between UK and European mainland attitudes.
“There is a real shortfall of native English speakers who are sufficiently fluent in another tongue to provide seamless translations from that target language back into English.
“It’s not just a problem for language providers either, we talk to many UK exporters who have difficulty in recruiting people with high level language skills.
“We do more work from English than into, but it’s always a problem to source good specialist translators working into English.”
If you would like to contact Mr Hunter visit the company’s website http://www.betterlanguages.com/